Lux Doggie Digs To Die For

A Fireplace And Pool Top The Pad's Amenities

January 08, 1990|By The Associcated Press

GREAT FALLS — In the heart of this fashionable Washington suburb, there's a yuppie dream house that's gone to the dogs.

The luxurious amenities of the doghouse that Richard T. Ziegler built for Crissy, his white German shepherd, and J.R., his Doberman pinscher, would strain the hyperbolic lyricism of a real estate ad writer.

Ziegler had the doghouse designed as a miniature, 8-foot version of the $3.5 million "contemporary Victorian" mansion that Ziegler built for himself on 25 acres of rolling woodland in the Virginia countryside west of Washington.

It's a doggone shame, but the two dogs hardly ever use their posh living quarters, except to flop down on the cool tile floor for relief on hot summer days, Ziegler says. Unlike the doghouse that Jim and Tammy Bakker built, this one isn't air conditioned.

So far, Crissy and J.R. have only dipped their paws in the pool, Ziegler says, although they enjoy sprawling on the deck to spy on wildlife in the woods.

"They spend most of the time in my house," he said. "They sleep on their own bed right in the master bedroom. You don't tell a Doberman where he's going to sleep." Ziegler, 53, a developer whose companied have built two dozen shopping centers in metropolitan Washington, North Carolina and the San Francisco Bay area, isn't the sort of man who'd nail a few pieces of plywood together to make a doghouse.

His own backyard has a gigantic, heated swimming pool with three waterfalls gurgling past rock gardens and a bubbling whirlpool bath. The main house, with its vaulted ceilings, and wide glass windows, is covered with 4 1/2 miles of redwood siding and 320 tons of flagstone from the Blue Ridge mountains.

Not bad for a bread truck driver's son from suburban Suitland, Md., who couldn't afford to attend college, but took night classes, raised a family and worked 90-hour weeks for two decades to build a booming construction business.

Does Ziegler have any qualms about spending more than $15,000 for a doghouse while the homeless sleep in the streets of Washington?

"Not at all," he says. "That's why I worked all my life, so I could do things like that."